Negombo Tamil dialect or Negombo Fishermen's Tamil is a

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

Tamil language Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of ...

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

used by the fishers of

Negombo Negombo (, ), also known as Punchi Romaya (Little Rome), is a major city in Sri Lanka, situated on the west coast and at the mouth of the Negombo Lagoon, in the Western Province, Sri Lanka, Western Province, from Colombo via the E03 expressway ...

. This is just one of the many dialects used by the remnant population of formerly

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

speaking people of the western

Puttalam District Puttalam is a district of Sri Lanka situated near the west coast of the country. The district has an area of . Along with the Kurunegala District, it forms the North Western Province of Sri Lanka. The district capital is Puttalam, which border ...

and

Gampaha District Gampaha District ( ''gampaha distrikkaya'', ''Kampakai Māvaṭṭam'') is one of the 25 Districts of Sri Lanka, districts of Sri Lanka, the second level administrative division of the country. It is the second most populous district of Sri Lank ...

. Those who still identify them as ethnic Tamils are known as

Negombo Tamils Negombo Tamils or Puttalam Tamils are the Tamil speaking ethnic Karavas who live in the western Gampaha and Puttalam districts of Sri Lanka. They are distinguished from other Tamils from the island nation by their unique dialects, one of which is ...

or as

Puttalam Tamils Negombo Tamils or Puttalam Tamils are the Tamil speaking ethnic Karavas who live in the western Gampaha and Puttalam districts of Sri Lanka. They are distinguished from other Tamils from the island nation by their unique dialects, one of which is ...

. Although most residents of these districts identify them as ethnic Sinhalese some are bilingual in both the languages.Contact-Induced Morphosyntactic Realignment in Negombo Fishermen’s Tamil By Bonta Stevens, South Asian Language Analysis Roundtable XXIII (October 12, 2003) The University of Texas at AustinSouth Negombo fishermen's Tamil: A case of contact-induced language change from Sri Lanka by Bonta Stevens , Cornell University

Morphology

The specific dialect known as Negombo Fisherman's Tamil (NFT) spoken by the

Karava Karava () is a Sinhalese speaking ethnic group of Sri Lanka, whose ancestors migrated throughout history from the Coromandel coast, claiming lineage to the Kaurava royalty of the old Kingdom of Kuru in Northern India. The Tamil equivalent is Kar ...

Karaiyar Karaiyar is a Sri Lankan Tamil caste found mainly on the northern and eastern coastal areas of Sri Lanka, and globally among the Tamil diaspora. They are traditionally a seafaring community that is engaged in fishing, shipment and seaborn ...

caste A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (en ...

fishers of Negombo. NFT has many distinctive traits, some of which may have arisen as a consequence of contact with Sinhala. It is also proposed that it may have undergone considerable morphosyntactic convergence with spoken or colloquial Sinhala (CS), as a consequence of contact with it. For example, NFT has mostly lost Tamil verb agreement morphology for person and number. Colloquial Sinhala (unlike Literary Sinhala) has a single verb form for all persons, singular and plural. Most Tamil dialects, by contrast, retain in both the spoken and the written languages a well-developed system of person and number verb agreement morphology. Thus in NFT we have, with Jaffna Tamil dialect (JT) which a major dialect of the

Sri Lankan Tamils Sri Lankan Tamils ( or ), also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, Sri Lanka, Northern Province, form the pluralit ...

ethnic group for comparison: *a. naan kolumbu-kki poo-ra (NFT) I Colombo go (I go to Colombo) *b. naan kolumbu-kku poo-r-een (JT) I Colombo going (I am going to Colombo) *c. mamə koləmbə-Tə yanəwa (CS) I Colombo go (I go to Colombo) NFT has also developed a number of other grammatical traits under the probable influence of Sinhala, including a postposed indefinite article, an indefinitizing postclitic –sari (apparently modeled on Sinhala –hari), and case assignments for defective verbs that follow the Sinhala, rather than Tamil, patterns of agreement.

Unique dialect

NFT probably originated in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, but has subsequently adopted, and is still adopting, Sri Lankan Tamil traits. The dialect is spoken by perhaps as many as 50,000 people, is thus a very distinctive dialect. With

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

based Saraswat

Konkani __NOTOC__ Konkani may refer to: Language * Konkani language is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Konkan region of India. * Konkani alphabets, different scripts used to write the language **Konkani in the Roman script, one of the scripts used to ...

(Nadkarni 1975),

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

based Saurashtri (Smith 1978), Sri Lankan Creole Portuguese and the

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India **Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...

, and

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

dialects of Kupwar ( Gumperz and Wilson 1971), NFT grammar is the outcome of pervasive structural realignment as a result of stable

bilingualism Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

. Negombo Tamil is the fact that the Karavas immigrated to Sri Lanka much later than Tamils immigrated to Jaffna. This would suggest that the Negombo dialect continued to evolve in the Coromandel Coast before it arrived in Sri Lanka and began to get influenced by Sinhala. So, in some ways, the dialect is closer to those spoken in Tamil Nadu than is Jaffna Tamil.

References

External links

Focus on traditional fishing methods
by Bernard Sri Kantha (Sinhalese) {{Tamil language Endangered diaspora languages Sri Lankan Tamil society Tamil dialects

Morphology

Unique dialect

References

Further reading

External links